No begging bowl in hand?

Morgan Tsvangirai is currently on a Magellanic (no pun intended!) journey around the western world, to ask for help to get Zimbabwe on its feet again, "without a begging bowl", so he says. But anytime someone volunteers images that have not been suggested, or provides answers to questions that have not been asked, reasonable observers may conclude that such a person is indeed, intimating truths emanating from deep within himself. Thus, we may state here without any danger of exaggerating, that the interim prime minister is holding a begging bowl, at least in his left hand! It's a little bit like passing the collection bowl in church: one does not have to give, but one feels like one is being asked to drop something in there.
I have no doubt that the prime minister will be able to go home with something in his bowl; certainly not as much as he would have hoped, but enough to encourage him to keep trying. Now, I have to confess that I consider the prime minister to be a good man with entirely altruistic motives, hence I wish him well in all his endeavours. However, I think that to expect the West to dig deep into their currently challenged pockets while the prime minister's partner in government, Robert Mugabe, continues to pull all the strings and play hide and seek with him, is a little over-optimistic.
Clearly, nothing that has happened so far is enough to convince critical thinkers that the prime minister has any real authority in Zimbabwe. It just seems that Mugabe is engaged in a protracted struggle to retain power for as long as possible. It may also be that I am caught up in a cyclical argument here, assuming that a release of significant aid by the west could be catalytic to the quest to send Mugabe into oblivion. My fear is that untargeted western aid could be counterproductive in the sense that it could strengthen ZANU-PF's hand by lubricating instruments of repression, not to mention the propaganda opportunity that would fall into Mugabe's lap.
On the other hand (as the prime minister himself has hinted), the west may live to regret its failure to help Tsvangirai if Zimbabwe descends into chaos. Humanitarian aid is fine, but it is not enough, as the Somalia case shows. Granted, the west would be taking a gamble by supporting Tsvangirai but if if all goes well, it could be a wager worth, as Chris De Burgh would say, "the biggest stakes yet: the souls of the dead"! Barack Obama may be the right man to place that bet!